How We Plan Congress

The 42nd Annual Congress in Denver had concluded only a month prior; however, on a weekend in June, we walked through the door of ONS to begin planning the ONS 43rd Annual Congress, May 17–20, 2018, in Washington, DC.

Some planning team members were new to the process and wondering what they’d signed up for; others were excited to be invited back and looking forward to the coming year. After sharing bits of information about ourselves, we settled in to listen to what ONS was asking of us. Over the next day and a half, we learned about Basecamp (used for email communications and document sharing), Confex (used for session information and documents), and about the “Garage”—a room where we spent time debating session topics (gathered from evaluations and member input), deciding on sessions times, and then session titles and descriptions. During the planning, breaks, and an amazing dinner complete with Pittsburgh Salads and Flatbreads (who knew you could put fries on salads and flatbreads?), we learned more about each other and evolved into The Planning Committee team as well as teams for the individual tracks of Clinical Practice, Advanced Practice, Leadership/Education/Management, Research and the new Speciality Radiation track.

With all of the concurrent sessions, various rooms, events, and Learning Hall activities, Congress takes a lot of planning and organization, and we were overwhelmed to start with this wall in the Garage (look at all the blank space where we needed to come up with session topics).

When we left ONS a short 27 hours later, we had filled the wall with sessions, had our assignments, and knew how we were supposed to accomplish them.

We were also looking forward to spending more time with our team on monthly conference calls and meeting again in February to review sessions and make sure we are planning the best ONS Congress possible. Congress registration opens in less than one month, and we’re excited to share with you the result of all of our hard work so far!